The Rhythm of Memory (18 page)

Now, in this cold house with barely enough food among them, Kaija understood little of what was happening around her. She could not understand what her birth father or her brothers said to her. Their Finnish tongues formed sounds that were foreign to her ears.

Some days, while her brothers busied themselves with the wood chopping and clearing the snow off the roof, Kaija would make her way to the railroad ties that lay only a few hundred meters from their house. There, under the canopy of silver birches and fragrant pines, she would walk on the side of the tracks, hoping to follow them. Hoping, since she remembered arriving on these tracks only weeks before, that she would be able to retrace them back to where they had started. Back to her home in Sweden.

The tracks were laid next to the river, a frozen, shimmering sheet of ice that, when melted, emptied into Lake Saimaa. Little Kaija in her pale blue coat stepped lightly beside the thick wooden planks, singing a Swedish psalm, her footprints embedded in the snow.

Her brothers had found her one evening when she had traveled too far. They had come looking for her with gas lights, their faces lined in frowns. Her father following them only a few steps behind.

“Where were you going?” they asked her in Finnish, and although she was not sure exactly what they were asking, she replied quietly in Swedish, “
Jag vill åka hem
.” “I want to go home.”

They scooped her up like a ragamuffin doll. Her frozen limbs sticking out from her woolen sleeves like sapling twigs broken off from the stem.

“She will be trouble,” one brother said to the other. “Wild and spoiled girl,” the eldest muttered to himself. Their father remained
four steps behind. Silent, his back bent over his wooden crutches. His graying red beard covered in patches of frost.

“She hasn’t just lost her mother, as you boys did,” Toivo reminded his sons, as they carried his little girl home, tears welling in her eyes.

“She also lost us a long time ago.” He shook his head sadly. “She was trying to find her way home.”

They returned her three months later to Sweden, thin and fragile like porcelain. Hugo picked her up at the boat, his heart beating anew since he’d received word of her return.

Her father had been kind, and as difficult as it was for him to let her go again, he knew he couldn’t provide the best life for Kaija. When Hugo took the letter to be translated, he couldn’t believe that his prayers had been answered, that her father was asking if she might return to Sweden.

He never judged the man, though his wife did. He knew how difficult it was to feed a family, and with Kaija’s mother gone, he could understand Toivo’s insecurity in raising the girl alone. Hugo was just so grateful that, with his consent and the necessary forms completed, she could be returned to him. That finally, she would be theirs alone.

On his deathbed eighteen years later, he held her hand and confessed that which he had kept secret for so many years.

“There was a letter that was sent over with you when you first arrived, Kaija, and I lost it.”

“That’s all right, Papa,” she said with tears brimming in her eyes. “Nothing is important now but your getting your strength back.”

“I am beyond that, my darling,” he said softly. “But please, listen. You must know what I am saying.” She was kneeling at his bedside, her tiny hands enveloped by his.

“When you first came to your mother and me, you came with almost nothing.” He paused and tried to gather himself.

“Yes, Papa, I know.”

“No, no, you don’t. When you arrived, I was the one who unpacked your suitcase. In there, I found a wedding portrait of your birth parents, a crucifix, and a prayer book.”

“But I still have all those things.” She clutched her crucifix to show him that she had kept it all these years.

“Kaija, dear, there was a letter written in the prayer book and I took it out for safekeeping because you were so young at the time. I placed it in my desk drawer and always promised I would give it to you when you grew old enough to understand.”

“Do you know what it said, Papa?”

“No, and that makes my guilt even more terrible. When you left to return to Finland after the war, I thought you would find your mother there waiting for you, and the letter wouldn’t be as important to you.…I had no idea she had already died.”

Kaija remained silent.

“When you were returned to Astrid and me, and you cried in my arms and told me how you would never return to Finland because your real mama was dead and your brothers didn’t want you, I so desperately wanted to give you the letter right then and there. I knew the letter was from your mother by the penmanship, the careful, delicate strokes of a woman’s hand. I knew it said how much she would always love you. Because I know how much I love you.”

Kaija was crying now. Her face red and her lips trembling.

“You never found it, Papa?”

“No, and I am so very, very sorry.” She could feel his fingers tighten against hers and she held them close to her lips.

“They loved you, sweet Kaija. How could they not have?” His eyes were now gray with death, his white hair swept behind him, his pillowcase imprinted with the tracings of his tiny head, a fleeting fossil in a weave of cloth.

“I know it has been hard for you here sometimes. But Astrid loved you too. One day, you will give birth to a child of your own and you’ll have compassion for a woman who is unable to bear children.”

Kaija nodded. She knelt down and pressed his brown-spotted fingers close to her cheek. “You have been the most loving father I could ever have hoped for. You cared for me, fed me…” Her voice was breaking and her face flooded with tears. “I have never doubted your love. The letter is unimportant.”

“It was the only one…” he whispered.

Neither the old man nor Kaija had any idea of the other letters that Sirka had sent Kaija during her first years in Sweden. The ones that had been destroyed by a woman too angry to love. That would remain hidden forever, like so many small, silent tragedies of war.

S
ANTIAGO
, C
HILE

J
UNE
1973

Allende had been in office over two years before Octavio accepted his offer of a full paid vacation. Salomé and he had finally agreed to take a three-month journey. They had always wanted to visit the mountains of Peru and see their friends who had moved to Argentina. “We will live like Gypsies for three months,” Octavio whispered into his wife’s ear, as he caught one of her loose black curls and twirled it around his finger. “Your mother and father can sleep in our room and make sure that Consuela doesn’t become complacent while the mistress of the house is away,” he teased.

It had been a difficult year for Chile, and Octavio was looking forward to spending some time alone with his beloved wife. He was anxious to spend a few months away from Santiago, where he would not have to hear the picketing on the streets, be inconvenienced by the striking taxi and bus drivers, or become enraged by the continuing lockouts orchestrated by the industrialists. He was convinced that the maladies, like the constant food shortages, that plagued the country were not due to Allende’s incompetency, but to higher forces that wanted the president to fail.

But Octavio believed that the opposition would itself soon grow weary from its efforts and would finally see that the president was not going to resign.

“We should take that vacation that Allende promised us,” Octavio suggested playfully to Salomé.

At night, he tried to tempt her with different itineraries where they could go. He held her to his chest and played with her curls with his forefinger.

“Remember our honeymoon, how we went to Argentina and danced the tango every night?”

Salomé was smiling to herself. Like a Cheshire cat, smug and round. “I remember how we arrived in Buenos Aires and the little hotel you had booked had lost our reservation and had no rooms to spare!”

“Yes, but remember how I took charge and found us the most memorable room in town!”

“You bribed a sixty-five-year-old madam to let us sleep in one of the rooms in her bordello!” Salomé was now twisting and giggling in Octavio’s arms. “Never in my life had I seen a room like that—red crimson walls, swags of drapery, and satin sheets on the bed!”

“Whatever do you mean?” he teased. “It was the perfect place for two newlyweds! I told the madam we would do our best to blend in with the activities in which the other guests were engaging.”

“You were incorrigible, Octavio!”

“You didn’t seem to mind, Fayum.” He squeezed her tightly and kissed her.

“I was pregnant, darling. Remember?”

Octavio smiled at his wife mischievously. “Why don’t we go back? It can be a second honeymoon of sorts. We can spend a few weeks in the city and travel north into the countryside, maybe even explore some parts of Bolivia. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to just have some time to ourselves?”

“And the children? How could we leave them? It wouldn’t be right.”

“We have your mother, we have Consuela. Why wouldn’t it be right?” Octavio asked, his hand gently caressing Salomé’s thigh. “Allende has given me this gift. We would be foolish to refuse a three-month, all-expenses-paid vacation. When would we have another opportunity like this come our way?” After much convincing, Salomé eventually acquiesced. She worried about the political unrest that had become almost a daily occurrence in Santiago, but Octavio promised her all would be fine when they returned. “The time away would do us some good.”

Octavio would later be proved wrong. The opposition would not weaken. They would not give up until Allende was out of office or worse.

It was ironic and almost lucky that Salomé and Octavio began to travel back from their sojourn in Argentina and the foothills of Bolivia on September 6, 1973. As a result, their chauffeur-driven car arrived on the Chilean border on the morning of September 11, only hours before the coup.

Rafael and his sisters had been sent home early from school, the teachers having sensed trouble. By noon, soldiers had positioned themselves at every street corner, and the little Fiat that was driving Salomé and Octavio back from their journey, its rooftop strapped with presents and souvenirs, was being stopped by guards every few kilometers.

“What has happened?” Salomé whispered to Octavio, her face pale with fear. “We should never have left the children. We should never have taken this trip!”

Octavio tried to hush her. He too was frightened, but he tried to mask his emotions and to assuage his wife’s doubts. “I’m sure
everything is fine,” he said before urging the driver to get them home as quickly as possible.

They reached the city limits just an hour before the streets entering the capital were officially closed off. The small, crowded car wound its way through the streets of Santiago’s suburbs until it finally reached the driveway of the pale pink house.

Inside, Rafael and his sisters huddled beside their grandparents, who listened to the radio for news, while the children whispered among themselves that they wished that their parents would come home soon.

Octavio and Salomé hurried to the front door and were greeted first by the maid. “Señor Ribeiro,” she said. “Thank heavens you have returned!”

They entered the large salon and their children immediately rushed to their side, Salomé’s mother clasping her hands together with thankfulness and relief.

But in less than an hour’s time, the family reunion would become a faint memory. Other distractions, far more momentous, would occur. There would be no sound of the tango ringing from the old Victrola, only the thunder of helicopters circling above, the sound of explosives echoing down the street from the rooftop of the nearby hospital, and from the soldiers firing down below. Yet, moments later, the Ribeiro-Herrera family would hear something far more terrifying from the transistor radio.

“La Moneda has been bombed!” cried Doña Olivia, her eyes wild and her voice shaking with fear. “Those animals are bombing the palace, with President Allende inside!”

From the voice box of the old radio, they heard the sounds of the bombs exploding. Suddenly, emerging from the orchestra of chaos, came the voice of Allende addressing the people.

“I refuse to leave the office to which I’ve been elected by the people of Chile.”
With the sounds of the bombs now growing more intense, the connection over the radio could barely be heard.

“To be sure, Radio Magallanes will soon be silenced, and my voice will no longer reach you. It doesn’t matter, you will continue to hear me. I will always be next to you, and at least in your memory, I will be a worthy man who was loyal to his country. The people must defend themselves…Workers of my country, I have faith in Chile and its destiny. Others will take on the struggle and surpass this gray and bitter day that the forces of treason claim to have won. Know that sooner than later the great avenues will open to free men who will pass down on them on their way to constructing a better society.

“Long live Chile, long live the people, long live the workers! These are my last words, spoken in the knowledge that the sacrifice is not in vain…and that at least there will be a moral punishment of the thieves, cowards, and traitors.”